Voyager: A robotic Columbus for the space age

In Voyager&colon; Seeking newer worlds in the third great age of discovery, Stephen Pyne tells the story of the probes as part of the history of exploration

DESPITE hurtling along at 300,000 kilometres per second, sunlight still takes nearly 16 hours to reach Voyager 1, the most distant object ever made by humans.

Along with its twin, Voyager 2, the NASA probe continues to send back measurements, decades after the two visited Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in their grand tour of the outer solar system.

Voyager reminds us just how audacious an idea the mission was back in 1971, when it was being formulated ahead of its launch in 1977. The robotic spacecraft would have to survive six times as long as any previous one just to make the three-and-a-half-year trek to Saturn then envisioned (the eventual journey was slightly shorter), not to mention staying alive for

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